Poll: Who is responsible for all the crap on the radio? (NOTE - multiple answers ok)

[ashulman]

My feeling is that there are a lot of fine songs floating around (even in teeny pop) and there are even a fair amount of decent singers and musicians on the radio. The problem much of the time is in the packaging. For example, many fine songs are ruined by cloying and sappy arrangements, or heavy handed singing when a more subtle approach will do, and most of all by a complete and utter lack of risk taking. Gotta blame the execs as it is their bottom line that drives all these trends. Radio is a spent force artistically speaking, which is fine by me, as Cds don't have commercials (yet).

 

[ashulman]

My feeling is that there are a lot of fine songs floating around (even in teeny pop) and there are even a fair amount of decent singers and musicians on the radio. The problem much of the time is in the packaging. For example, many fine songs are ruined by cloying and sappy arrangements, or heavy handed singing when a more subtle approach will do, and most of all by a complete and utter lack of risk taking. Gotta blame the execs as it is their bottom line that drives all these trends. Radio is a spent force artistically speaking, which is fine by me, as Cds don't have commercials (yet).

 

[DimChandeliers]

It's not the kids!!!
There have always been kids with bad taste - but there's always been room on the radio dial for The Partridge Family and Led Zepplin, sometimes on the same station! That's not the case anymore. The fault lies with the record industry and the huge radio conglomerates like Clear Channel (if you wanna go back further, you can probably blame Ronald Reagan too. Hell, I blame him for everything). Everything has been WalMart-ized. All the choices have been eliminated. But that only pertains to commercial radio and major label releases. On the indie/minor label level, quite the opposite has happened. I liken it to what has happened in major league sports. Expansion has lowered the talent level. There are so many indie labels and releases it's impossible to find the cream of the crop. This is not necessarily a bad thing. I think you'll find more artists will have small regional followings. The good stuff is out there. A lot of it is on the internet,
right here in the mp3 forum or at IUMA, Nowheremusic, AcidPlanet, etc.

 

[gervis]

radidio

Who's responsible for the crap food you get at McDonald's and Starbucks? Not sure, but it might as well be the same question (or at least it has much to do with food as questions about radio have to do with music).

What has this, or Elvis, for that matter, got to do with songwriting I wonder.

i am wit you

i simply quit listening to commercial radio about 4 or 5 years ago
wras 88.5 GSU radio is awesome
college radio seems to have placed it's head in between the door and the door jamb- jamming it eternally (i hope) open; allowing the unsigned, the fresh, the new, the unincorporated, and the unafraid, to boldly go where radio has not gone for quite some time.

who in the world cares who is responsible for manure????
if you know where it is, don't step in it!

ask your fellow musician freinds what they are listening to. buy used cd's by bands you have never heard of. see who your favorite musicians are listening to and support your local musicians. and also support those that support your local musicians- the college radio stations that will play anything they think is cool without one iota of concern for the money, or lack of, behind a band.

the fact is music is healthy, alive, and free, just as it has always been- the only trouble is you have to go looking for it now, instead of the radio stations bringing it to you.

kristin hersh
king crimson
throwing muses
aimee mann
michael penn
gillian welch
laika
suzanne vega
patti griffin
david byrne
tom waits
beck

all fresh
all beautiful
all absent from the radio

 

[gervis]

if you roll a turd in m&m's, it is still a turd

 

[Jamal Bucket]

Re: radidio

i am wit you

i simply quit listening to commercial radio about 4 or 5 years ago
wras 88.5 GSU radio is awesome
college radio seems to have placed it's head in between the door and the door jamb- jamming it eternally (i hope) open; allowing the unsigned, the fresh, the new, the unincorporated, and the unafraid, to boldly go where radio has not gone for quite some time.

who in the world cares who is responsible for manure????
if you know where it is, don't step in it!

ask your fellow musician freinds what they are listening to. buy used cd's by bands you have never heard of. see who your favorite musicians are listening to and support your local musicians. and also support those that support your local musicians- the college radio stations that will play anything they think is cool without one iota of concern for the money, or lack of, behind a band.

the fact is music is healthy, alive, and free, just as it has always been- the only trouble is you have to go looking for it now, instead of the radio stations bringing it to you.

kristin hersh
king crimson
throwing muses
aimee mann
michael penn
gillian welch
laika
suzanne vega
patti griffin
david byrne
tom waits
beck

all fresh
all beautiful
all absent from the radio

i agree with most of this...

however aimee mann is FAAAAAR from beautiful....lol..."visually " speaking...



but i like her songs..
jamal

 

[XerXes]

just don't listen to the radio. who cares.

follow jamal's statements.

 

[mgraffeo]

Gotta agree, vehemently, with Mad Hack, and baniak (hey, that rhymes...)

Music on the radio is no different from mass-produced sculptures or paintings for sale. After a while, you cater to what your customer wants, not solely to your artistic desires.

Since the day that the music died (and probably long before that), popular music has been a product. Not art. Plain and simple. And as long as people are buying that product, they'll keep selling it.

Every once in a while, truly influential bands come along, and shake up people's expectations of what music is. This is a rarety, not a common occurrence. Sure, we can look back at the 60's, and say "wow, look at all the influential music that came from then, there's nothing like that now". But hindsight is easy. How many crappy bands put out crappy products in the 60's? How easy is it to forget that?

The Beatles, the Beach Boys, Elvis, the Doors, Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, The Sex Pistols, Pink Floyd, Metallica, Nirvana, Pearl Jam; these bands are the exception, not the rule. Don't lose any sleep over then fact that you can't identify what band will turn out to be influential from right now.

BTW, if you want to hear bands pushing the musical frontiers in "popular" music, I submit that Radiohead is probably the best example of a band today which will be remembered. Like 'em or not, they are not just putting out a product that they know that their customers want to hear.

Lastly, take a listen to the first several Beatles albums. How much fluff ("I want to hold your hand") did they have to put out, in order to gain the credibility to truly experiment, and not lose their record-buying audience?

Let's not be hypocrites, here...

-mg

 

[Tucci]

But it coul be good.....

What gets me is that the record companies could theoretically make just as much money from good music if they wanted to....but they don't. Good music would sell just as well as the crap they put out, maybe better. If they put their dollars into promoting good music they would still be making huge profits. So why don't they?

I am strating to become convinced that someone really is trying to make crappy disgusting music as widespread as possible....not for the money, because they could make money off of good music like I said before; but because they're evil whoever they are and they want to deaden our brains and hearts.

Tucci
www.locuststreettaxi.com
Horns, Harmony, & Humor

 

[baniak]

Tucci,

I think that your last sentence hit it right on the nose:

"they want to deaden our brains and hearts."

The thing is, record companies cannot make money off of good music, because good music has some depth to it. Not necessarily intellectual depth, or emotional depth, or even musical depth - but a depth of musical vision that wasn't meant to be co-opted by Pepsico or Disney.

Best selling music needs to pander to the lowest common denominator - 13 year olds. (No offense to any 13 year olds on this board.) If it can't do that, it can't sell.

And by sell, I don't mean records. Hell, anybody can sell records. But can they sell Pepsi? Can they sell Seventeen magazine?

A best-selling record isn't just a record, it's a potential advertisement for sugary beverages, and hamburgers, and Christina Aguilera action figures. A marketing machine, meant to limit our choices and desires to a set of products.

Anyway, something that enlivens our brains and hearts generally makes us think of other things besides Pepsi, or Taco Bell, and that's the last thing a record company wants. Livening hearts and minds (aka making people think) is a dangerous activity.

 

[mocharock]

Wow what a sensitive issue this turned out to be.

I agree with ShowDown on this one, basically it all cycles. I wonder when Death Metal will come back. (The same time that the Mullet hair do does I assume right.)

I never knew that clear water radio was owned by disney. Actually that will explain a lot. I do agree that we mere mortals are forced to listen to this or watch that.

Damn it I feel the rage coming on know!!!

 

[gervis]

radio good

music good

mtv good

consume

obey

sleep

be numb

 

[baniak]

That is funny.

But I am serious, and not trying to be a conspiracy theorist, but like I said before, record companies goal is to sell shiny discs, not good music - and the cheaper they can do it, the better.

Also, it helps your record sales if you can have Pepsi (or Volkswagon, or whoever) sell your record for you as well. but that means your record has to help sell Pepsi in return. This is something that Pink Floyd or Nirvana (or whatever artist you think is good) doesn't do as well as Britney Spears... probably because they don't have boobies

Anyway, we mere mortals AREN'T forced to listen to it... we just do... and that's why record companies are very smart.

 

[Tucci]

But doesn't it seem that the record companies could make fortunes from good music too if they tried? They have done it in the past.

Tucci
www.locuststreettaxi.com
Horns, Harmony, & Humor

 

[bdbdbuck]

record companies goal is to sell shiny discs, not good music Anyway, we mere mortals AREN'T forced to listen to it...

.......unless you're sittin at a stoplight next to the dude that has one of those shiny things hangin from his rearview mirror.


bd

 

[Toker41]

12

Radio has sucked for so long now. Surely the god of rock weeps.

 

[glynb]

Concentration of media ownership is a major factor. Once you have huge global companies owning record labels, radio stations, newspapers, TV etc, one arm does things which assist the other, diversity is lost and competition is stifled.

What you need in order to get 'good' music played (whatever that is) is a variey of specialist competing media each trying to win its own audience. That way they are tempted to inovate in order or try to be different and gain audience share or specialist audience.

Trouble is governments seem to be going the other way and allowing greater concentration of media ownership in fewer hands.

I mean if you could control the whole market from production, artist, media exposure, merchandising, and you are a greedy capitalist and noone stops you then you're going to do it!

 

[Toker41]

Wow, something else I can blame that asswipe Bush for!

 

[Synesthesia]

Come on...let's not get paranoid, here. I highly doubt that music corporations' deliberate intention is to "deaden our hearts." Top-of-the-chart music has never been the cream of the crop as far as artistic music goes; as someone said before, the music that is both artistically groundbreaking and commercially successful is a rarity. Music, like any entertainment business, is driven by trends, and trends wear thin with time. I think it'll be funny when twenty years from now, teeny boppers of the '90s will be blasting the current music, looking back to the good ol' days when talented artists like Britney Spears could actually dance and sing by herself...or, taking a cue from William Gibson, was actually human.

I grieve along with everyone else that artistically ambitious music is not embraced by the mainstream...but it never has been, really. At least in the U.S. Still, music artistry, like every aspect of music, is totally subjective, and the majority rules in the business world...if the music that everyone liked on this forum suddenly became immensely popular, all the fans of Christina Aguilera would be on their own forum: "What's with the crap on the radio station today? People can't even write catchy hooks anymore. There's no talent anymore."

I really don't know where I'm going with this, I guess it's just a rant in the true sense of the word!

 

[Toker41]

I stopped reading when I got to the part that said Britney can dance and sing! She can't sing, and doesn't live, and yet charges $100 a ticket to see her dance and "lip sync". She doesn't even write her own f**king songs! She is a dancer....period! To be an artist is to create. She is a creation, a product, a lie, not an artist.